Curiosity
by bethylark
Summary: Wyatt gets caught reading one of Lucy's books.


_At 9:00 a.m. on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth met with his fiancée, Lucy Hale. Lucy was the daughter of a former senator from New Hampshire, John P. Hale._

Wyatt still wouldn't admit to himself why he was sitting in the corner of a conference room at Mason Industries at 3 a.m. on a Sunday reading a brand new copy of Actor and Assassin: An Account of the Final Moments of John Wilkes Booth.

Wyatt wouldn't admit it, but that annoyingly persistent voice in his head thought maybe it had something to do with Flynn revealing Lucy's supposed journal to him a few weeks back, and how it'd been bothering him (and okay, even intriguing him) ever since to know Lucy had written a journal where she talked about not only their time traveling adventures, but him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if he ever got his hands on that journal, would he have to strength to resist opening it up and reading every word? Probably not, but this was hypothetical anyways… if the journal even truly was written by Lucy.

 _Huh, Booth had a fiancée named Lucy. Wonder what else he and this 'Noah' dude have in common…_

Wyatt silently chastised himself. He had no right to be judging Lucy's fiancée, had no right to be jealous. He'd never even met the guy.

 _Lucy hardly has either._

 _Shut up, Wyatt. It's none of your business._

He marked the page he was on with his finger and leaned his head back, now lost in thought. He hoped Lucy had finally cut this Noah character loose. Not because he cared about Lucy being engaged to another man; no, because he knew true love and he knew heartbreak, and clearly this guy wasn't the one for Lucy. It simply wasn't fair to string him along out of curiosity. This was the wrong timeline, it wasn't meant to be. Lucy needed her sister back.

Wyatt shook his head of his musings and went back to reading in his suspicious little hiding spot. They were waiting for Lucy and Rufus to arrive for their next mission, so seeing as he had some time to kill, he'd pulled the book out and started reading.

 _Booth went on to Booker and Stewart's barbershop on E Street near Grover's Theater where barber Charles Wood trimmed his hair._

Gotta look good when you're murdering the President, apparently.

"Hey man, what you reading?" Wyatt was startled as he looked up to see Rufus standing in the doorway. He immediately shut the book and held it against his body to cover up the title.

"Uh, nothing, just ah, something to pass the time," he replied.

"Didn't peg you as a big reader," Rufus said.

"I'm not," Wyatt answered, and was relieved when Rufus dropped the subject to talk about their mission as they headed down to wardrobe.

Wyatt was standing by a bench as he buttoned up his World War I era trench soldier's uniform when Rufus walked up to him, about to say something before he looked down at Wyatt's stuff on the bench and got a comical look on his face.

It only took Wyatt a second to realize his mistake. There, on top of his modern clothes, lay the book.

"Actor and Assassin: An Account of the Final Moments of John Wilkes Booth by Lucy Preston," Rufus read aloud as he grinned at Wyatt in a way that made him want to slap the look right off his face.

He snatched the book right back and hid it under his clothes. "You're reading Lucy's book?" Rufus asked, that stupid grin still on his face.

Wyatt tried to act nonchalant. "Yeah, well, I, uh, I saw it in the window of a bookstore and thought 'why not?'"

 _Liar. You ordered it through express shipping on Amazon._ Rufus could be quite gullible, and Wyatt silently prayed that would be the case in this moment. It wasn't.

"Sure you did," Rufus teased as Jiya walked up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist.

"Did what?" she asked. Great, now she had that stupid smile on her face too.

Wyatt grumbled "nothing" at the same moment Rufus responded, rather loudly, "Wyatt's reading one of Lucy's history books."

"Is he?" Jiya asked with mock surprise. "Now why would he suddenly have an interest in reading boring old nonfiction?" she winked.

"Maybe it's because of the author," Rufus said.

"Guys, chill, I was just curious. And bored," Wyatt responded, hoping to put an end to this annoying encounter. He didn't like what they were implying.

"Mmhmm," Rufus said, clearly not convinced. "I got eyes, you sly dog," he repeated Wyatt's words to him the week before.

Thank the good lord in heaven, at that moment Agent Christopher came down to interrupt the Roast of Wyatt Logan and tell Jiya to get to work from the computers as she handed him and Rufus some period appropriate fake identification, two each depending on which side of the battle they may run into on the western front in 1917 Europe.

Finally, Lucy joined them, dressed like a French villager and somehow still looking way too cute to be entering a war zone. What Flynn wanted in 1917 France was a mystery to all of them.

Wyatt didn't realize he was staring until Rufus nudged him in the side, with stupid grin back on his stupid face. For a moment he panicked that Lucy might've noticed, but as he glanced back at her he saw that she was focused on adjusting her outfit, grumbling something about damn sexist white men and never getting to wear something more 'practical' on these missions. It made Wyatt chuckle.

When they got in the lifeboat, Wyatt was fastening Lucy's seatbelt when he noticed the absence of the ring on her left hand. For a moment, he was going to ask, but figured she might've just taken it off to avoid another situation like they'd had with Bonnie and Clyde in 1934. Wyatt pretended that didn't slightly disappoint him.

"Hey Lucy, guess who I saw reading one of your books," Rufus suddenly interrupted his thoughts. Heat surged through Wyatt's face as he shot their pilot a death glare that should've petrified even the bravest of souls. He was fantasizing about sewing Rufus' big damn mouth shut.

Lucy stared back at Rufus for a moment before she figured it out, probably from Rufus' embarrassing attempt at winking in Wyatt's direction. Did he not know you wink by blinking one eye? She turned to Wyatt with a look of surprise on her face, "You're reading my book?" she asked a smile began to creep up on her face.

Wyatt had killed men, seen more gruesome things than anyone deserved to see, survived war and seen his wife murdered, but he could not bring himself to look Lucy in the eye at that moment. "I just, uh, saw it at the bookstore," he mumbled pathetically.

Wyatt spared a glance up and saw that Lucy looked like she was trying to contain her laughter as Rufus watched the exchange with rapt attention.

Finally he couldn't take any more of the mocking, not from both of them at once. "What's so funny?" he demanded, sounding like a cranky little boy but not caring one bit.

To her credit, Lucy tried to suppress the smile on her face. "Nothing, it's just ah," she looked at Rufus and began laughing softly again before she finally got out, "well, my books are only available through university bookstores and online through Amazon and Chegg."

It took him a moment longer than it did Rufus to figure out what she was implying.

Oh, God. He was caught.

Wyatt was sure he'd never hear the end of this.


End file.
